Ah. Mashed potatoes. With some little puddles of melted butter. What’s there not to like, I ask you?

When I was planning the menu for the dinner I did the other night, I wanted something to go with the pork chops and apple cider sauce. Something that would also be a vehicle for the sauce. I could have made plain rice (which I admit, sounded the best), but somehow the cider sauce didn’t sound good with brown rice. I rarely make white rice anymore. I actually don’t make mashed potatoes much either. Last time was Thanksgiving dinner. But, after pondering my menu, I decided mashed potatoes were the best fit. But not just plain mashed potatoes. Once I consulted my recipe collection I knew the mashed potatoes with mascarpone was the right one. It has tons of chopped Italian parsley in it, and of course, an ample amount of mascarpone.

Probably most people think mascarpone is used mostly for desserts. And here in the U.S., I suppose it is. But after all, it’s just a cheese. Something like cream cheese, but made a bit differently. It has a consistency that’s in between sour cream and cream cheese, and it has a very creamy taste. The credit for this recipe goes to Tarla Fallgatter, a cooking instructor here in our part of the world.

You cook the potatoes with the green onions, which flavors the potatoes throughout. Then you mash them by hand (you want a few lumps) and add in the mascarpone, a bit of the water you cooked the potatoes in, and a mound of chopped Italian parsley. Season it, and you’re done. Making this recipe seemed like the right option since I could make this ahead. Once made, I plopped the whole batch into my crockpot and set it to low, then scooped it out into a serving bowl at the last minute. Delicious.
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The finished photo of this is a bit blah-looking. You know, cabbage begins to look a little grayish if cooked through. So fortunately I did snap a photo of it when I added the apples and chestnuts, still in the pan. Next time I won’t pop this in the oven, but serve it directly from the range top. I was trying to get some things made ahead, so popped this in the oven to reheat. So the cabbage cooked more than I would have liked. Therefore, don’t do as I did in this case, but cook this just before serving.

We entertained the other night, and I had some wonderful boneless pork chops to serve our guests, and wanted something appropriate to go with. Enter cabbage. I scrounged around the internet trying to find a recipe that suited me. How could I tell? I can’t begin to say – I just read a recipe and either I like the sound of it, or I don’t. I knew I wanted to use red cabbage and apples, probably onions, maybe shallots. So a search produced a bunch of options, and this is the one I chose. I’d make this again, but I’d omit the chestnuts. To me, they didn’t add that much to the dish. Maybe even distracted me. Some people aren’t so fond of chestnuts anyway. But I loved the apples in it, and it’s very low fat and low calorie. As one of our guests said, pure comfort food.

Cook’s Notes: Don’t be tempted to put the apples in early. You want them to still have texture and shape. To be barely cooked. The onions and shallots add a nice character depth. One large head of cabbage will make enough to feed about 10 people. Maybe more. And be sure to make this just before serving. Long cooking only grays the vibrant color of the red cabbage. Overall, this one won’t be a favorite. Maybe it was the chestnuts. Or not quite enough of the sweet/sour stuff. It was just kind of blah altogether.
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Do you sometimes forget how good vegetables can taste? I forget about all the variations on vegetables. I need a little memory jog now and then to remind myself that there’s more than one way to make cauliflower. Or broccoli. Or zucchini. Or. Or. Or. It could go on and on.

And surely I forget about using carrots – in a raw form, other than eating out of hand. So I was reading Fresh Catering (a blog I read regularly) and Rachael had made this carrot-ginger slaw. Well, my eyes and nose perked up and I immediately printed out the recipe. I had everything on hand except the fresh ginger. But I had some in a bottle, which I’m sure wasn’t AS good, but this salad was so refreshing (next time I really will have the fresh ginger). I have Italian parsley in my garden, but I had an abundance of cilantro in my refrigerator, so I used cilantro instead. DH loved it. So did I. And it took a maximum of about 7 minutes to make it. Literally. That part I liked a lot. And it was better than having another – yet another – green salad. Don’t get me wrong, I love green salads. Really I do. But there’s a tedium about making green salad. And I like homemade dressing too, which adds to the hassle.

When my daughter, Dana, was a little tyke, she first learned how to bake cookies. That’s probably universal in this day and age. Children and cookies just go together like peas in a pod. Or puppies and little boys. Once she got a bit older I began teaching her about knife skills. Probably when she turned 8 or so, and I thought she was mature enough to hold and wield a dull knife.

Initially, she was thrilled with her new-found skills and independence. She liked helping in the kitchen, and was very proud of her accomplishments. But the interest began to wane in the years to follow. I was a working mom, had to get dinner on the table in fast order, so setting the table and making a salad was what helped me the most. She wasn’t old enough or tall enough really to master a spatula and frying pan at the hot stove, or many other things with hot pots and pans, so the salad making was the best choice. As she got older still she began to dislike making a salad unless it was just chopped lettuce. I like lots of vegetables in my salads. Back then it was mostly carrots, celery, green onions, tomatoes and peppers. Now I add lots of other things like fennel, Feta crumbles, sugar snap peas, nuts, even. But she didn’t enjoy the chopping and cutting anymore, probably because it was so repetitive.

Here’s the salad maker now, a picture taken when we were at Dana and Todd’s house over Christmas – she’s 39 now. When I was 39, she was 13, going on 30. But that’s another story. Now she makes salads all the time for her family. And mostly they’re just lettuce. Her kids don’t much like eating raw vegies. They look at salad as merely a vehicle for consuming ranch dressing. But Dana thoroughly enjoys all the homemade dressings. When we talked on the phone the other day she was busily making her favorite of my dressings, the VIP Salad Dressing, which I posted last year. It may have been my very first posting on this-here blog. Or one of the first. And that dressing is still one of my very favorites too.

Last summer Dana’s two children were here to visit for awhile, and the 10-year old, Taylor, was anxious to help me in the kitchen, so I taught her how to make salad. How about that. What goes around, comes around. Dana was a bit in shock when I told her I’d taught Taylor how to use a sharp knife. She did just fine, sweetie! Mom knows all. That’s a bit of an inside family joke if you didn’t get it. Dana reads my blog every day, so am certain I’ll be hearing from her about that! Anyway, I just listened to someone on the radio the other day, that most children, when they reach about 7 or 8, are old enough to learn how to use a knife in the kitchen.So, I’ve rambled on far too long here. Telling family stories. Suffice that this not-green-salad is a good one, a keeper, but probably not one for children to make unless an adult grates the carrots and ginger. Other than that, children could likely do all the rest. If it’s a kid-making deal, maybe start them out with green salad and teach them some knife skills.
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This is another recipe from the cooking class the other day. We had a short discussion about this salad at the December cooking class, when one of the members mentioned it, that she orders it every time she goes to a restaurant here in Newport Beach, called Gulfstream (no website, but it’s on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and MacArthur and you can read lots of reviews of the restaurant if you search online). It’s a very lovely, upscale restaurant, and quite pricey. I’ve never been there, although when it first opened I did go in and read the menu. I don’t know why I haven’t been back to try it, but just haven’t. But this salad definitely will encourage me. Our instructor, Tarla Fallgatter, loves to try to dissect a restaurant dish, and she had the salad there, promptly came home and worked out her version. We all really liked it. A lot.

I don’t seem to make rice salads much. I don’t actually make many carb-rich dishes anymore since my DH and I both prefer to limit our carbs. But this tasted so darned good, I think I’ll have to. What made this salad was the dressing. Tarla explained that she prefers to use a fruit-based vinegar on salads such as this one. She said we could substitute champagne vinegar, but she finds it much more acetic (meaning too acetic for her tastes), so encouraged all of us to run right out and find some pear vinegar. Lo and behold, I just happen to have some pear vinegar. If any of you read my posting about the contents of my oil and vinegar cupboards, you’ll understand why I say that. I’d have been amazed that I didn’t have it. Sure enough, I have a bottle (unopened, I might add) of Sparrow Lane D’Anjou Pear Vinegar. I think I bought it in Healdsburg last spring at a cute eclectic market on the plaza.
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Someone who reads my blog has asked me to share the recipe for Gulliver’s Creamed Spinach. Here is the recipe, directly from the same book as the Gulliver’s Creamed Corn, that I blogged about just yesterday: Dear S.O.S.:30 Years of Recipe Requests to the Los Angeles Times, by Rose Dosti (from the Los Angeles Times). According to the blurb in the book, The Times first published the recipe in 1974. [November, 2011: my hubby and I had dinner at Gulliver’s and I took photos of the two veggies – they were just as good as I remembered – I took the pictures with my iPhone and brightened them up a bit with Photoshop.]

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If you’ve never had Gulliver’s corn. . . Well, what can I say. You’re missing out. Uh, yea, missing out on a whole lot of calories and fat, I suppose. But missing out on undoubtedly the best creamy corn you’re ever gonna eat. We’re lucky to still HAVE a Gulliver’s Restaurant here in the county where I live. Although I can’t say that I’ve been there for at least 4+ years. They do make some mighty fine prime rib. But it’s the corn – only the corn – that I’d go there for – just to have seconds.

The recipe was printed in the Los Angeles Times Food Section, back in the 1970’s. I’ve made it dozens of times since. I can remember, really I can, the day it appeared in the Times. My face lit up like a lightbulb. I never thought I’d get the recipe! What’s funny is that it’s nothing fancy. No unusual ingredients – just rich cream, a little sugar and Parmesan cheese on top. And likely, back in the 70’s it was that green canned Parmesan, not the real thing.

It’s a staple at Thanksgiving dinner for some dear friends of ours (yes, Maggie, that’s you!). They hosted our family many a holiday and I made a triple batch to serve the multitudes on one of them. When I went to look for the recipe today, it wasn’t there, so I turned to a book, given to me by a dear friend, Linda T., when she worked at the Times. She was the outside sales rep for the Times, we were the customer, our ad agency, Ad Masters. Linda kindly brought me a Rose Dosti autographed copy of the book in 1994, when it was published. Dear SOS was the column in each week’s Food Section with requests from readers for “special” recipes, or more often, ones from popular restaurants, bakeries, even some dives, in and around Southern California. Restaurants like the Brown Derby, Chasen’s, Benihana, Bullock’s, Clifton’s (a venerable old cafeteria), El Cholo, Lawry’s, Love’s Barbecue, Marrakesh, and the Velvet Turtle. Dear S.O.S.:30 Years of Recipe Requests to the Los Angeles Times, by Rose Dosti. It’s a treasured book in my collection; one I refer to occasionally. It’s particularly fun to see the restaurants mentioned in it, many no longer in business. The book was printed just once in 1994- it’s long out of print. I was so pleased to get one. In doing a Google search, ebay has one for $12.99 plus shipping. In case you always wanted one.

Back in those days I took different clients of our ad agency on a tour of the Times, probably about twice a year. It was a perk for our clients – the management at the Times would kindly entertain the client, the actual advertiser – we were just the middle man, the encourager, the ad writers and designers. (Because then, and even today when newspaper advertising is down, the Times charges an arm and a leg to advertise.) The tour included a lovely lunch in their executive dining room (not open to the public, not even to most employees). In taking the tour, we always walked past the test kitchen. It was all enclosed, with a big window. And a wide shade. In all the years (17), only once was I able to peek in the kitchen – the shade was UP. But alas, nobody was in there. No tasty goodies being prepared. No Rose Dosti popping in or out of an office or door. I’d heard stories about the aromas wafting in and out of the halls. Oh well.

So this recipe came from that book, and I am sure it’s an authentic one pried from the owners of Gulliver’s. Otherwise it wouldn’t be in the book under the Gulliver’s name. Gulliver’s Creamed Spinach is on the same page. Also very good. But it’s the Creamed Corn that is a favorite around our house. Made only on very, very special occasions. And although the recipe indicates it serves 8-10 people, if you have hearty eaters, or people who like seconds (ah-hem) this won’t feed but about 6-7 people is my guess. [November, 2011: I updated the photo at top – my hubby and I went there for dinner – so I took some photos with my iPhone and fiddled with them using Photoshop – the veggies were just as good as ever although I am certain they make their corn with frozen corn. There was no way it was fresh off the cob. Nor could I taste even a smidgen of Parmesan cheese. ? ? ?]
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Do you run out of oven space on holidays? Especially Thanksgiving? Fortunately, I have 2 regular ovens AND a microwave/convection oven too. When we remodeled our kitchen a year ago we put in 2 ovens. They are just 27″ wide, so the two turkeys took up both regular ovens with no room to spare for side dishes. We baked yeast bread in the small convection oven an hour or so before dinner, and heated up one of the vegetable dishes in the microwave.

Making mashed potatoes at the last minute is not my idea of fun cooking on Thanksgiving. Recently a friend mentioned that she keeps mashed potatoes in her crockpot for holiday dinners. What a great idea, I thought. She said, as long as your potato recipe has a goodly amount of fat (butter, sour cream or something), the potatoes will hold for hours. I’m here to tell you the technique works like a charm. I’ll be doing this year after year after year.

Again, I turned to Rick Rodgers’ book, Thanksgiving 101, and he has a “Make Ahead Mashed Potato Casserole” in the 1998 edition. His are baked, but I used the recipe with just one substitution, then piled the 10 pounds of mashed potato mixture into the large crockpot. [I made a double batch.] The recipe below is for 5 pounds of potatoes. I have a very old crockpot – with a ceramic insert. It has the high, low and auto settings, but it’s big. Good thing since we filled the pot to the brim with potatoes. These can’t be called healthy in any way, but this was Thanksgiving, after all. I didn’t skimp – I used full fat cream cheese, and full fat sour cream. Were they good? Abso-posi-tutely, as my dad used to say. I’m looking forward to all the leftovers for tonight’s dinner. The pumpkin pie is gone and the broccoli with Hollandaise is gone, but we have lots of the other stuff: the super-moist kosher turkey, dressing, green beans, broccoli/leek puree, gravy AND mashed potatoes!
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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click link to open MC – 14 contains photo)

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For Thanksgving, we had 3 vegetable side dishes, plus dressing and mashed potatoes. This was one of the three vegetables. A recipe I hadn’t made before, and I loved it. Very simple. And fairly low in fat besides. I wouldn’t exactly call it purely healthy, but there are only 11 grams of fat per serving. Not too bad.

I’ve mentioned before that I use MasterCook 9 for my recipe software. It was developed by Sierra products, but now is owned by a company that doesn’t provide much customer service or support. So, a couple of years ago when I was working toward printing my own cookbook, I needed more help than the help screens were offering. I found a message board kind of place, a Yahoo group, where I could post questions and get really helpful answers for some of my complicated cookbook problems. (FYI: I never did print the cookbook, having decided to start this blog instead.) In reading the boards I discovered a site that offers recipes already formatted in MasterCook (another Yahoo group called MC Taste_Tested), so it’s a very easy thing to import them into my program. People from all over the country load recipes there every day. It got to be too much reading, though, so have since stopped receiving the compilation every day. But this recipe came from that source, and I have no idea to whom I owe the credit. Doing a Google search provided nothing with the same or similar name. So, I tip my hat to some unknown person who uploaded this recipe.

This can be made ahead with no difficulty, and heated up in the microwave if you’re short on time. The original recipe is just warmed on the stovetop, but I didn’t want to do that for our Thanksgiving dinner. So I just put it into a oil-sprayed baking dish, refrigerated it overnight, then heated in the microwave for about 4-5 minutes, with platic wrap intact. DH liked this vegetable the best.
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I do believe, if I say so myself, that this was far and away the best stuffing/dressing I’ve ever made. I used to buy Pepperidge Farms package cubes, and started from that relatively mild slate and made it my own with additions, etc., but this time I decided to veer way off the traditional path. Last Thanksgiving I made Rachel Ray’s apple and onion stuffin’ muffins. They were good. Very good, actually, but the taste didn’t wow me. I didn’t want apples this time, which gives dressing a real sweet taste. I did like the convenience of baking them in a muffin tin – they can be heated up in a jiffy, so you pop them into the oven when you take the turkey out to rest before you slice it up to serve. And by the time you are ready to serve, the stuffin’ muffins are done.

I could have used the same muffin style, I suppose, even with this version, but it seemed easier to just make it in a big pan because of serving 16 people. (FYI: I made a double batch, so baked it in a 9×13 pan.) For the last few years I’ve been buying kosher turkeys. And generally they are too salty to put dressing in the bird itself. So since I discovered this super-wonderful-juicy turkey preparation, I’ve been baking the dressing outside the bird.

I wanted dressing with Italian sausage this year. So I turned to my favorite Thanksgiving cookbook, Thanksgiving 101 by Rick Rodgers. (As a side note, the photo at left is of Rodgers’ new 2007 revised edition – I have a 1998 edition). Sure enough, I found a recipe titled Italian Stuffing with Sausage and Parmesan Cheese. I took some liberties with Rodgers’ recipe, so I can’t exactly give him full credit. Part of it is mine, and part thanks to Trader Joe’s. I bought Trader Joe’s boxed dry stuffing/dressing mix. I added many of the ingredients in Rodgers’ recipe, then I added my own minor changes. So here’s what it is: onion, celery (lots), bell peppers, garlic, hot Italian sausage, thyme, oregano, Trader Joe’s seasoning packet, some Parmesan cheese, butter and chicken stock. We have some left over, along with some gravy. Delish that will be.
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One of the things that deters me from buying whole butternut squash is the difficulty of cutting it (first), the yukkiness of scooping out and discarding the seeds and strings (second), scraping that stringy stuff away from the inner hollow (third) and lastly, the slicing or dicing of the hard squash itself (fourth). So when I spotted fresh pre-cut butternut squash at Costco last week, I bought two 2-pound bags. Some of it went into a soup I made last week, and the balance was made into butternut fries.

Normally, “fries” ought to be long wedges, but I had cubes. That didn’t deter me one bit. I snooped around the internet a little bit and found a few recipes (I just did a google search for butternut squash fries). I kind of used my own imagination. Rachael Ray’s online magazine had a recipe that used maple syrup and creme fraiche, plus lime juice plus some seasonings. I took ideas from the few recipes I did find, and here’s what I did: I tossed the cubes with olive oil, and sprinkled them all over with a mixture of ground cumin, garlic salt and some mild chile powder (I used Chimayo). The squash went into a relatively hot oven (425) and baked for about 45-60 minutes. I thought they’d be done in about 40, so tasted it. Disappointment at that point. I’m SO glad I left them to bake another 10-15 minutes because they became succulent, a bit crispy on the outside edges, and those said edges had begun to caramelize with their own natural sugars. In that short time they became magic. Amazing how baking chemistry works. These are remarkably easy. If you prefer more sweetness to them, by all means sprinkle them with some brown sugar, or try maple syrup. But it’s not needed, I assure you.
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